Friday, 10 March 2017

DPP72: Last House on the Left

So what can I say about the The Last House on the
Left well as you have proberbly guessed from the title of this post it was one of the DPP72 (to find out what this is look at my earlier posts on the subject), it is a 1972 American exploitation-horror film written, edited, and
directed by Wes Craven, Yes that Wes Craven, the man who brought
Freddy Krueger into our lives and dreams, and it was produced by Sean S. Cunningham yes that Sean S. Cunningham the creator of the Friday the 13TH series.

The story is inspired
by a Swedish film called The Virgin Spring from the 1960’s which I have to admit I have never seen. It was
the directorial debut of Wes Craven. The main thing this film is
famous for in my opinion was bringing the phrase "To avoid
fainting, keep repeating 'It's only a movie'..." in to the
public’s eye with its advertising campaign. This phrase had been
used by earlier film ads but it was really hammered home here and
this phrase become highly associated with the whole Video Nasty’s
scandal.

The brief story of this
film goes something like this, there is a group of wanted criminals
who the police are looking for. A girl tells her parents she is going
out to a concert with a friend, the girls run in to one member of the
group of criminals who leads them back to their current hideout under
the pretence of selling them drugs. Once there the girls are taken
hostage, this leads to them being taken to a forest where they are
physically and sexually abused for the groups amusement and finally
murdered. The film was accused of being over the top in this regard
but while it has a certain sadistic streak with members of the gang
taking definite pleasure from the fear and humiliation of these young
women, less is shown than in various other films. It can be
disturbing at times but that is because you see enough to know what
is happening and the villains come across as so deeply dislikeable
that on any occasion where your imagination is left to fill in the
blanks it is going to think of the worst possibility.

I imagine back when
this film was banned one of the things that led to that decision was
the mixture of sexual assault and violence, I would say that there
was a definite worry that with young ''attractive'' ladies being naked on
screen while you saw characters clearly enjoying assaulting,
humiliating and raping them worried some people. It perhaps made them
wonder if there naked presence might somehow stimulate the viewer and
cause some form of association between torture, assault, humiliation
and gratification. It took until March the 17th 2008 for
the BBFC to pass the full film uncut as fit for release. This was one year before this film would actually recieve a remake

People have argued over
whether this film is an import piece of horror history or a piece of
gutter trash and I have to admit I do tend to agree it’s a part of
horror history. It is the editorial debut of Wes Craven, a man who is
huge in the world of horror, it’s not a great film, he has done
much better films since, but it is where he started. I don’t agree
with any worries that people will be taught to associate any of the
unpleasantries in this film with gratification, I watched it and I
felt sorry and uncomfortable with the victims and I didn’t want
their killers to get away with it, because I thought they deserved to
be punished. This shows that the film had an effect on me, it got me
to feel one way or another for most of the characters in it and surly
that is one of the main reasons for film to exist, to get us invested
in stories, to get us to care about who lives and who dies, what they
do, who they are and how this is dealt with by the world that that
has been created. Yes I agree that there are some shocking things in this film but I think a lot of them were handled as tastefully as they could be
without rendering them pointless and nuterd beyond point and purpose.

Some of the music and
the attempts of humour with strange police characters threw me a
little but I think it was a conscious attempt to throw something in
to the mix to stop everything from getting overly bogged down in doom
and gloom, when you look at a lot of cravens latter work there is
humour mixed in there often far better than it is here but it needs
to be remembered that he was finding his feet here.

I would give this film
a 6 out of 10, it’s not brilliant, it’s not bad though, it’s
watchable and you can see some good ideas and good implementation
shining through. Due to the rape this film tends to get compared to I
spit on your grave and I can see why, I certainly think this one is
far easier to watch though especially if your squeamish, everything
in this in that particular area can be cut down to about 5 minutes
and it’s a lot more implied than in I spit on your grave so this is
a much better starting point if your looking for a film of this type which is a little less full on, in honesty though unless your looking at this film for its historical value I would tend to recomend that for a more enjoyable film you look at something a little latter in Wes Craven's career.